ACADEMIA NOIR

ACADEMIA NOIR

"the Owls are not what they seem"

THIS IS WHERE IT ALL STARTS

This Is Where It All Starts

(THE VERY SHORT VERSION)

“And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?”

Talking Heads

As the End of Humanity looms, a nocturnal, deeply black version of Academia remains the only rational thing to do. Academia Noir offers a space for a rebellious, anarchistic and black approach to academic study and research. It builds the avant-garde guerrilla of scholarship. 

Academia Noir starts off with theories of Stupidity — so as to better avoid it. We do go down and explore the rabbit holes, but we know the ropes to climb back to the surface. (At least, we hope we do. Strange things have been happening around here.)

Knowingly, we go where Angels fear to tread.1 Because, as Auguste Comte didn’t quite mean to say, the metaphysics of today is the science of tomorrow. Alternative epistemologies are our thing. The Otherworld is one of our destinations.

Academia Noir extols the virtues of the Vertiginous Mind. Academia Noir goes wider, deeper, higher, further. Cosmic and existential dizziness are unavoidable. However, Noir Academians remain cheerful, sane, and grounded through Black Humour and Memento Mori. The situation might be hopeless, but it is certainly not serious.

Noir Academians do not chuckle. When we get the joke, a thundering, gargantuan laughter is absolutely de rigueur. This laughter is liberating. It is irreverent. It is bawdy. It is ground-shaking.

Severe and austere, not to say stark aesthetic visions surround Academia Noir. The preference seems to be for le blanc et le noir. For Nōtan and chiaroscuro.  Memento Mori art, too, captures the heart of many a Noir Academian.

The famous — or is it notorious? — BOOKLIST is a collective effort, and the Cornerstone of our Nocturnal Investigations.

Academia Noir is not for the faint of heart.

Enter the Grid or read more about the Pillars of Academia Noir.

  1. From the poem “An Essay on Criticism” by Alexander Pope (1711). The full line reads:
    “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
    Part II of “An Essay on Criticism” includes the famous couplet:
    A little Learning is a dangerous thing; 
    Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring                                                                
    — lines 215–216  ↩︎